I am still not asleep when everyone as has already fall asleep. I am spending my own sweet time in front of the computer. The night is not really young right now and I want to get into the dreamland soon. I wonder what I will dream of tonight, or maybe just a dream that I will forget upon waking up. I dreamed about stock market and security last night which was pretty weird, and cool.

I look around, it's a pitch black darkness, it's only the computer that is shining my sight at this moment. Good night my fellow friends, and how was your Malaysia Day people? Happy weekends!

Video of Korean hip hop artist Safari Girl doing a bit of rapping to promote Safari's Respect Day – a mini-concert in Seoul's Hongdae district back in May 2011.

Couldn't find much info about the lady, probably an indie artist. Just thought that it's an interesting piece to share despite not being a hip hop music fan. She's better than 90% of the female rappers in mainstream K-pop these days imo.

Today is September 16th, I hope it's not too late and I would like to wish you all have a super duper Happy Malaysia Day! It's a public holiday, enjoy your weekend and love your country. I love my country so much! You know, Malaysia get independence 31st August 1957 and the real Malaysia was form with the combination of Sabah and Sarawak on 16th September 1963. Woohoo! Despite not being the first world country, I still support and like it a lot.

It was a road some said couldn't be built. Most of the men ordered to make it happen were African American soldiers sorted into Army units by the color of their skin.

As World War II raged, they labored day and night in the jungles of Burma, sometimes halfway up 10,000-foot mountains, drenched by 140 inches of rain in the five-month monsoon season. They spanned raging rivers and pushed through swamps thick with bloodsucking leeches and swarms of biting mites and mosquitoes that spread typhus and malaria.

Some died from disease or fell to their deaths when construction equipment slid along soupy mud tracks and dropped off cliffs. Others drowned, or were killed pulling double duty in combat against the Japanese."

The article describe briefly the history of famous Stilwell Road and how India and China are trying to restore, revive and reopen this important land link between the two Asian powers. Morefamously known as Ledo Road, it is built during the World War II by allied to supply China which was underseige by Japanese Imperial Army. However, the Ledo road could not be opened until 1945, and supplies carried over the Ledo Road never reached the capacity carried by air. Soon after the opening of Ledo Road, Burma was leberated from Japanese army, and War ended shortly afterwards.

More than 1,100 American troops died building the road in what is now Myanmar. Today China and some in India see the long-neglected route as their lifeline.

Reporting from Myitkyina, Myanmar and Oakland—

It was a road some said couldn't be built. Most of the men ordered to make it happen were African American soldiers sorted into Army units by the color of their skin.

As World War II raged, they labored day and night in the jungles of Burma, sometimes halfway up 10,000-foot mountains, drenched by 140 inches of rain in the five-month monsoon season. They spanned raging rivers and pushed through swamps thick with bloodsucking leeches and swarms of biting mites and mosquitoes that spread typhus and malaria.

Some died from disease or fell to their deaths when construction equipment slid along soupy mud tracks and dropped off cliffs. Others drowned, or were killed pulling double duty in combat against the Japanese.

Not long after the thankless job was done, two atomic blasts finished the war with Japan, and a hard-won passage that soldiers called "the Big Snake" was abandoned to the rain forest. The road had cost 1,133 American lives, a man a mile.

Evelio Grillo is one of the few vets still alive to tell the tale of the Stilwell Road. The son of black Cubans who migrated to Florida to roll cigars in Tampa factories, Grillo graduated from Xavier University, a black college in New Orleans, and was immediately drafted. He made staff sergeant in the Army's segregated 823rd Engineer Battalion.

In an old black-and-white photo he sent home during the war, Grillo wears his khaki uniform and garrison cap, one eyebrow slightly arched, his eyes dark and mischievous. His favorite stories of his time in Burma are about cleaning up at poker, taking breaks to look at pretty girls, and talking to tent rats as big as small cats.

He remembers making road trips across the border to India to buy light bulbs when the old ones popped in their sockets most nights in their camp. The new ones exploded just as quickly as the ones they replaced.

Grillo also tells of boneheaded officers who ordered him to measure the road with lengths of chain for hours on end until someone finally pointed out that the Army jeeps had odometers.

"That was probably you," Grillo's daughter Elisa Grillo Clay says from her father's bedside at a nursing home in Oakland, proudly calling him "a professional troublemaker."

Grillo, 89, was one of more than 15,000 U.S. soldiers who put their backs into the punishing work that many thought was futile.

In a little over two years, they completed the road from India to the western Chinese city of Kunming. The U.S. spent almost $149 million to build it and, at the request of Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, it was named the Stilwell Road, after U.S. Gen. Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, the abrasive commander of Allied troops in the region who insisted the project would work.

More than half a century later, China now is working to resurrect it as the first major overland trade route since World War II with India, where business leaders, politicians and bureaucrats also are pressing their government to formally commit itself to the road as a link between the world's two most populous nations.

Finding the money to pay for the upgrade, Indian proponents say, is the easy part. Overcoming the fear of more competition and the unwelcome visitors opponents say the road would bring is proving more difficult.

India has already declared China a strategic partner, and for the last six years New Delhi's "Look East" policy has held up increased trade with the rest of Asia as India's best hope for economic growth.

With India's traditional trading partners in the U.S. and Europe sinking deeper into recession by the day, the push to reopen the road should gain new strength, said Mahesh K. Saharia, a leading backer in the powerful Indian Chamber of Commerce.

He and other supporters say that connecting two of the most undeveloped regions in India and China could lift millions of people out of poverty. Indian opponents argue that the risk of insurgents and drug smugglers sneaking across a more open border is too high.

"My own guess is that the benefit of the cooperation is so immense, and the cost of noncooperation is again so large, that everyone who looks into it will . . . have to agree to it," said Saharia, chairman of the business group's North-East Initiative.

In 2005, Indian and Chinese survey teams began mapping out plans to rebuild the road. So far China has done all the reconstruction work, paving dozens of miles with granite stones packed into dirt. When the monsoons end, the surface is watered, rolled and baked hard in the sun, making it almost as flat as asphalt.

The road's western end, close to the Indian state of Assam, has been swallowed up by the jungle, and portions of it can be traveled only on foot. In the east, the upgraded section near the Chinese border is busy, but most of the traffic consists of small traders and tourists on short visits to gamble, or to see transsexual burlesque shows in Myanmar.

The rest of the road is usually so quiet that villagers stroll down the middle as if it was a sidewalk. When they hear the distant hum of an approaching vehicle, pedestrians choose a lane and let the pickups, stuffed with swaying passengers on wooden benches or stacked with rusty drums of gas, sputter past.

About 40 miles southeast of Myitkyina, the road winds up a hill past the village of Nalong, where Hla Di Lu has lived since the day she was born 82 years ago.

She lives alone, in a leaky hut of bamboo and wood, next to a tiny plot where she grows rice. A key dangles from a string around her neck. It opens a heavy padlock on her front door, where someone has written in chalk a holiday greeting: Merry Xmas Happy New Year 2008.

She has to coax her brain to recall the long-ago war. What surfaces from the depths of an old mind is a bit blurry, as if one's had a few drinks, Hla Di Lu says with a toothless grin. But a few things come into focus: Japanese soldiers running villagers through with bayonets, American soldiers sharing tins of fruit and canned meat from their K-rations.

The brightest memory is the glow from the road that lighted up the darkness as the Americans toiled through the night, pushing hard to make the next mile.

Grillo had always been a fighter. In wartime, he defied white commanders he considered racist. After peace returned and he moved to Oakland, he struggled for decades to bridge the differences between Hispanics and African Americans, arguing that they were all part of the same black community.

He still lives there today, in a space not much bigger than his bed, in the shared room of a nursing home. The body that fought off malaria 14 times during the war, the lifelong rebel who refused to bow to intolerance, is slowly surrendering to time.

The strong hands that hacked and dug through Burma's jungle and rock are frail now. Grillo's right leg has been amputated at the knee. His dry, papery skin is drawn taught over atrophied muscles. His voice is a whisper, and each word he speaks is a tug of war between mind and mouth.

Within half an hour, he is exhausted, and his eyes gently close until he can summon enough strength to try again.

Squeezing the hand of his son and namesake, California Superior Court Judge Evelio M. Grillo, the old vet smiles at the memories of winning enough poker pots from his war buddies in Burma to buy his mom a house in Tampa, Fla.

But he'd rather forget most of his two years at war. Grillo had to suffer the indignities of racial segregation on the 58-day passage to India aboard the Santa Clara, where the only comforts were reserved for the white officers.

Grillo remembers most of them as vulgar racists, and wrote in his memoir, "Black Cuban, Black American," that the road builders assumed that the white men giving them orders in Southern drawls had been selected because they were "deemed to know how to handle black men."

The black GIs had to bunk in the ship's windowless, foul-smelling hold, stewing in the "stench cooked up by the sweat, the farts and the vomit of 200 men," he recalled in the memoir.

"White troops had fresh water for showering," Grillo continued. "Black troops had to shower with sea water. White troops had the ample stern of the ship to lounge during the day. Black troops were consigned to the narrow bow, so loaded with gear that it was difficult to find comfortable resting places."

Things only went downhill in the jungle. In a letter home, handwritten on Red Cross stationery and dated June 7, 1943, Grillo was looking forward to taking leave in a big city where he could sit on a toilet again.

"We'll just have to make the best of whatever comes until such time as this nightmare shall spend itself," he wrote, "and a box of candy or a bunch of flowers shall again be thought of as some of man's most effective and most important 'weapons.' "

By then, most of the veterans were long dead. The Pentagon could locate only 12 to invite to the ceremony in Tallahassee, and only six were well enough to travel, the American Forces Press Service reported at the time.

Today, the band of brothers who built the Stilwell Road has all but disappeared. But the feeling of resentment among black men who felt dumped in the jungle and expendable because of their race is still alive in Grillo.

He's happy to hear that the road is coming back to life. He summons all his strength to speak, whispering that it shows he and his comrades did a good job building it. But the proud smile on his wan face disappears with a question from his daughter.

"Do you think Winston Churchill was right when he said it was a waste of lives building the road?" she asks from the foot of his bed, speaking loud and slow to help him process the question.

SHAH ALAM (Sept 15, 2011): Police corporal Jenain Subi who fired the shots which killed student Aminulrasyid Amzah, 15, in April last year was today sentenced to five years' jail.

In handing down the sentence after finding him guilty of manslaughter, Sessions Court judge Latifah Mohd Tahar said she took into consideration the need for the penalty to strike a balance between the public and the accused's interests.

Jenain, 49, had been charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder for the death of Aminurasyid at Jalan Tarian 11/2 between 1.10am and 2am on April 26, last year.

"The court has taken into consideration that the accused was a policeman for 25 years. However, it must be remembered that weapons given to the police must be used reasobably for official duties," said Latifah, who ordered Jenain to serve his sentence from today.

Latifah allowed an application by Jenain's lawyer M.Athimulan for a stay of execution of the sentence pending appeal to higher court. and set bail at RM10,000.

DPP Idham Abdul Ghani meanwhile said he will seek instruction on whether to cross appeal against the five year jail sentence (the charge under section 304 (a) of the Penal Code carries a maximum of 30 years jail sentence, upon conviction).

Outside the court, Aminulrasyid's mother Norsiah Mohamad, 62, in an immediate reaction, said she only wants her son's name to be cleared.

"He is not a criminal, please clear my son's name. That is all I asked for," she said of the claim by police that her son was a robber and a criminal.

Aminul's uncle, Kamarudin Hassan, 46, said the family will discuss and decide on their next course action to clear his name.

"Thank God justice has been done over his death," said Kamarudin, adding the family respects the court's decision.

Earlier, in handing down her decision, Latifah said Jenain had failed to raise a reasonable doubt against the prosecution case.

She said Jenain, who testified under oath, had agreed that there was no other vehicle on the road, there was no danger and no other people on the road, and thus, there was no need to discharge 21 shots automatically.

"As a policeman, the accused was aware that the sub-machine gun is quite dangerous and fatal as the bullets are released continuously," she said.

"It is clear that the bullet, which went into the victim's head came from the accused," said Latifah.

In mitigation, Athimulan urged the judge to strike a balance between the interests of the accused and the public interest.

"He was carrying out his lawful duty for society. He was a law enforcement officer trying to apprehend a violator of the law," he said, adding that Jenain did not know in his mind (at that time) that the "violator" was a boy.

"Should he be punished for carrying out a legitimate duty of apprehending a person, who was reasonably a law violater?" Athimulan asked.

Lawyer Salim Bashir, who also represented Jenain, pleaded for a lighter sentence, saying his client was not a trigger-happy policeman and had no previous conviction.

He said Jenain, whose wife is a teacher, was a father of four children, the eldest of whom is 15 and the youngest was three.

DPP Idham however pressed for a deterrent sentence, saying the accused had committed a serious offence.

"A 15-year-old child died due to the accused's act. There was no act of provocation by the victim, " he said, adding that Jenain was not in a situation where his safety or that of other people had been threatened when he discharged his firearm.

Yunnan province has seen new opportunities for improving both its economy and its society now that a provincial project has become part of a national strategy.

Yunnan's Gateway Project was started in December 2009 as a direct response to remarks that President Hu Jintao made during a visit to Yunnan in July of that year.

Hu said that Yunnan should be a gateway for China to open up further to Southeast Asia.

This is also just a part of China's grander scheme to open not just to Southeast Asia, but to South Asia, West Asia and East Africa as well. This covers more than 50 countries and more than 2.8 billion people.

Qin Guangrong, Yunnan's governor, explained it in this way, "The Gateway Project will change Yunnan and other provinces from a peripheral border area to the front and give vitality to a new round of development for ethnic regions in the southwest."

Qin added that the gateway idea has five different forms – as a channel, window, platform, base, and barrier.

The channel, which is the key to the project, means building an international thoroughfare to Southeast and South Asia.

The window refers to making Yunnan a showcase of Chinese culture and friendship. The platform means that Yunnan should have an economic and trade cooperation role. The base refers to Yunnan as a manufacture and processing base, while the barrier refers to its role as an ecological barrier.

"We're going to build international highways, railways, water routes and oil and gas channels and make the city of Ruili a pilot in opening and exploring.

"It will accelerate economic cooperation as a cross-border economic zone, and take part in building trade and economic cooperation zones beyond the border," Qin went on to explain.

Even as these routes are being built, Yunnan already has three links to Southeast and South Asian countries.

One follows the Southern Silk Route and consists of the Kunming-Myanmar Road, China-India Road and Guangtong-Dali railway. It runs from Kunming, through Myanmar, to India and Bangladesh.

A second route consists of the Lancang-Mekong River, three highways that link Kunming and the port of Mohan port, and the Xishuangbanna airport. It reaches Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

The third, via the Kunming-Vietnam railway, Kunming-Hekou highway, and the Honghe River, runs to Hanoi, Haiphong, and other cities in Vietnam.

Qin said that transport is an important part of the Gateway Project. During the 12th Five-year Plan (2011-2015), the provincial government will rely on a national highway construction plan and improve links with inland cities, coastal cities, Southeast Asia and South Asia.

By 2020, the government is expected to complete work on superhighways in Yunnan; roads to cities, prefectures and tourism sites in Yunnan; improved roads to national ports; and superhighways to Sichuan and Guizhou provinces, and the Guangxi and Tibet regions.

Yunnan's transportation infrastructure has already improved relations with Southeast and South Asian nations, turning the border province into a major front and, according to Qin, "This has been an important provincial policy in recent years."

Yunnan has been following this policy for 10 years, going back to the beginning of China's West Development Program. The province has spent more than 250 billion yuan ($38.48 billion) on it.

It is believed that making Yunnan a gateway will increase economic and social growth in the Southwest. It will also connect China with developing markets in Southeast, South, and West Asia, as well as East Africa, while strengthening relations.

At the same time, it holds the key to Yunnan's social and economic development, especially in ethnic regions.

In 2010, Yunnan saw some progress in its foreign trade, with an annual increase of 69 percent, over 2009, which ranked second in China.

According to Qin, ASEAN and South Asia mark the beginning of a new era for Yunnan. The province has been active in the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), Greater Mekong Sub-region cooperation (GMS), and in India, Burma and Bangladesh Regional Economic Cooperation.

In doing so it has increased China's connections with neighboring countries in the areas of electric power, commerce and customs activity.

Yunnan has played a major role in exploring the Mekong River Valley and in GMS economic cooperation. The Kunming-Bangkok International thoroughfare is already completed, shipping cooperation on the Lancang -Mekong River has helped the vegetables-for-oil, flowers-for-fruit, and other exchanges, and there has been progress in railway and energy cooperation.

And it does not end there. Qin told China Daily that, "This is a golden opportunity for Yunnan's tourism. Yunnan will take advantage of the Gateway Project to internationalize its tourism and build a first-class tourist province and popular tourist destination for Southeast Asia and the rest of the world.

"It will enrich tourism, by making use of airlines and tourist channels to neighboring countries, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe and America."

In addition, "Yunnan's education has promising prospects with the Gateway Project," Qin said.

Yunnan can use its unique climate and ethnic diversity to provide a place where various cultures communicate and assimilate. The thing is, to gear education to international standards, and increase communications with ASEAN and South Asia colleges.

Over the next five years, the goal is to get 100,000 foreign students to come to Yunnan and to send Yunnan's young people to study abroad.

Thus, "going outside" is a major part of Yunnan's opening-up policy. Thanks to the reciprocal trade relations with Southeast and South Asia, many Yunnan enterprises will invest in those areas and get involved in projects there. Yunnan's foreign investment has it ranking higher than neighboring provinces.

I am a Malaysian. I have always been an UMNO member.This is my beloved homeland.But what have I contributed?Nothing!Exactly..nothing but immense love and support for the peace and harmony of our Malaysia.

Now, if I want to criticise a bit or a lot, somebody/many will say" O shut your stupid mouth!Stop complaining! Stop the whining.Go pack your bags and live in another country!You have not done anything for the country!"

I cannot recall this historic moment being celebrated during the tenure of our previous Prime Ministers..were they sleeping?Or was this day celebrated under a different name?

I'm not out to ruin my Malaysian citizenship.However, I'd like to say something that has been bottling up.

Foodstuffs at the supermart are getting more expensive by the day.For just a few normal essentials, the total receipt can be rather stressful.Heartache and despair lie inside so many Malaysians who are not that rich.

Yes..it doesn't matter much for those with a better financial standing.

To think we just had our Ramadhan..we fasted partly to remember the hardships of the poor..their growling hunger pangs and whatever we're suppose to experience.

And now,can we safely claim that we have spare resources for our 1Malaysia celebrations?Can we honestly say that it is a wise idea to splash for this occasion?

Before we know it, the rakyat will be burdened with some price hike.Let's wait..what's the item that is next?

We can be thankful we are okay with enough food on the table.But can we pretend not to notice those who are swallowing choked tears almost everyday??For a true 1Malaysia spirit, dare we ignore and say it is none of our bloody business!

p.s.O please!! Do not knight me as an opposition member..that'll put me in hot soup!Thanks.

Tan Cheow Hong: 'If I had tried to stop them they would have arrested me'

As a Buddhist, Tan Cheow Hong didn't expect to run up against Malaysia's Islamic laws.

Then last November, his estranged wife showed up at their child's school with a court order from a Sharia judge, who had granted her temporary custody of their 7-year-old.

The wife took their daughter away with the help of Islamic officials and police.

"If I had tried to stop them they would have arrested me," says Mr Tan.

He says he had no idea his wife had become a Muslim. The next day his wife converted their daughter to Islam without Mr Tan's consent. That means both mother and child are now subject to Islamic law, which does not apply to non-Muslims like Mr Tan.

He is now filing for child custody through the civil court while his wife is fighting for the case to be heard in the country's Sharia court.

Blurred lines

The case highlights a growing problem with Malaysia's separate judicial systems and those caught in between. Muslims are bound by Sharia law on personal matters like marriage and custody rights, while members of other faiths follow civil law.

Yet the lines become blurred when cases involve both Muslims and non-Muslims. Analysts say some disgruntled spouses are exploiting the parallel judicial system.

The most high profile case involved an ethnic Indian couple who were married in a Hindu ceremony. The couple separated and the father became a Muslim. Then he secretly converted his two children to Islam and obtained custody through the Sharia court.

The Hindu mother was also granted guardianship, but through the civil courts. After several years the case is still in the courts to determine which court has jurisdiction to hear the matter.

In a desperate bid to escape the Sharia court order, the mother took the two children and fled the country.

Cases such as these have sowed a feeling of distrust among some non-Muslims who feel that the 'quick conversions' of children with the consent of only one parent are being allowed by religious authorities because of a rising tide of Islamisation in the country.

Courts defended

Mr Tan's estranged wife, Fatimah Fong Abdullah, refused to comment on her case to the BBC, but her lawyers confirmed that the child was converted after she returned to her mother. They are fighting to have the case heard in Sharia court.

The Muslim Lawyers Association argues that non-Muslims can submit themselves to the Sharia court jurisdiction.

"It is a fallacy that the Sharia court is religious," vice president Abdul Rahim Sinwan said in a statement to the BBC.

"The court is another system which can be alternative or in fact complement the present civil system."

There is a misguided perception that non-Muslims cannot get justice in the Sharia court but there are plenty of Sharia lawyers willing to give them fair representation, said Mr Rahim.

Law experts say the issue stems back to 1988, when the Constitution was amended to state that civil courts cannot hear matters that fall within the jurisdiction of Sharia courts.

This was meant to prevent Muslims unhappy with a Sharia judge's order from running to civil courts to challenge it, but in practice many claim it has also allowed Sharia courts to expand their remit.

Although government officials have said they will address the problems between Sharia and civil courts, nothing has been translated into law yet.

Alternative representation

In the absence of a remedy, a Christian lawyer is now fighting to practice in Sharia courts to give non-Muslims fairer representation.

Victoria Jayaseele Martin has been banned from practicing in Sharia courts in Kuala Lumpur because she is not Muslim

Victoria Jayaseele Martin says she is qualified because she holds a diploma in Sharia law from the prestigious International Islamic University Malaysia.

But the religious council in charge of Kuala Lumpur says she cannot practice in Sharia court because she is not a Muslim. Ms Martin is currently appealing against the decision.

Since non-Muslims are being asked to take cases involving Islam to the Sharia court, Ms Martin says they need effective counsel, especially in conversion cases.

Legal limbo

But even with effective counsel in the Sharia court, non-Muslim Mr Tan says he will not subject himself to Islamic law.

Mr Tan is asking the civil court to decide whether one parent can convert the religion of a child without the consent of the other. He also wants the judge to declare that the Sharia court had overstepped its boundary when it granted his wife custody of the child, who was a non-Muslim when the order was issued.

The case is still stuck in the court process. For now he lives in limbo. Every two weeks he takes a five hour bus journey to Kuala Lumpur to see his daughter. It is part of the temporary custody settlement by the civil court.

"If my wife is in a good mood, then she'll allow me to see our daughter. If not, then she won't," he says.

Mr Tan is prepared to push his case up to the country's highest court.

But he feels the law is helpless.

"This type of case is very difficult to resolve in Malaysia because Islam is supreme."

Judges Heidi Klum (right) and Michael Kors watch as a model presents a creation at the 2012 Project Runway show during New York Fashion Week September 9, 2011. — Reuters pic

LOS ANGELES, Sept 16 — Supermodel and TV host Heidi Klum was named yesterday as the most dangerous celebrity in cyberspace, inviting malware and viruses to flourish on computers.

Internet security firm McAfee said searching for downloads and screensavers for the "Project Runaway" judge and former Victoria's Secret model runs a nearly one in 10 chance of landing on a malicious website with spyware, spam, phishing and other viruses designed to steal personal information.

CNN talk show host Piers Morgan, also a judge on "America's Got Talent" and a former British tabloid newspaper editor, was the most dangerous male celebrity in the survey, produced annually by McAfee.

McAfee said cyber criminals often used the name of popular celebrities to lure people to websites that are laden with malicious software.

It said singers and sports stars tended to be safer searches than movie stars and models. Cameron Diaz topped the cyberspace danger list in 2010, and was No. 2 this year.

"While slightly safer than last year, searching for top celebrities continues to generate risky results," said Paula Greve, director of Web security research at McAfee.

"Consumers should be particularly aware of malicious content hiding in 'tiny' places likes shortened URLs that can spread virally in social networking sites, or through e-mails and text messages."

Making news headlines does not seem to be a factor. Charlie Sheen was ranked 59 in the 2011 list, despite his acrimonious departure from television show "Two and A Half Men", and Lindsay Lohan was 18th despite being in an out of court and jail again this year. — Reuters

The five most dangerous celebrities in cyberspace, according to McAfee are: